The picnic was resumed, awaiting the drying of Elaine’s clothing, but it is safe to say that no one of the Dunn family had the opportunity again that day to get into mischief. Each girl made herself responsible for a child, and watched it with a hawk’s alertness, though not with a hawk’s motive. "We’ve let them steal flowers, and get stung by bees, and then pretty nearly drowned," Amy remarked. "And for one day that’s enough," a sentiment received without any dissenting voice. But in spite of the drawbacks of the day and the fact that Isabel was left behind, the small Dunns were enthusiastic over the picnic. "Be you goin’ to take us again some day, Miss Peggy?" little Johnny asked, as he hugged his armful of flowers closer, and smiled at her over the heads of the blossoms. "I don’t know," Peggy answered with a gasp. "I’ll have to wait to get thoroughly over this, before I’ll be able to make up my mind." *CHAPTER XXI* *AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR* The papers Monday evening contained an account of a heroic rescue. There was a fancy sketch of a young woman diving from the deck of a pleasure yacht to save a child who with uplifted arms was drowning in the most dramatic manner imaginable. Elaine saw the sketch over the shoulder of the man who occupied the seat in front of her in the street car, and it was not till she reached home that she discovered that the theatrical young heroine was supposed to represent herself. Along the Terrace they had found it out long before and each of the girls had made a beeline for the Marshall home with a paper under her arm. Peggy was the first arrival, with Amy a close second, while Ruth and Priscilla reached the door at the same minute. What with the rustling of papers, and the chorus of voices all explaining at once, Mrs. Marshall conceived the idea that something dreadful had happened, and it was necessary to produce the smelling-salts before she was equal to hearing the account. The story had been written up with high regard for picturesqueness. The Dunn family had multiplied into a car-load of ragged children and the five Terrace girls had become wealthy young women who devoted a large share of their leisure to philanthropy. Upon Elaine, as the heroine of the occasion, adjectives were lavished with the generosity characteristic of newspaper reporters when they start out to be complimentary. Mrs. Marshall gradually lost her look of apprehension as she listened, and her face took on a motherly pride, which obliterated, for the time, its habitual expression of fretful weakness.